Australia’s prime minister said on Tuesday the country is set to reduce emissions by 35% below 2005 levels by 2030.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he would not commit at the UN climate conference in Glasgow to increasing the country’s current 2030 target of reducing emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels.
“We will meet it and we will beat it,” Mr Morrison said, referring to the 2030 target Australia adopted in 2015.
“We’ll beat it with emissions reductions we believe of up to 35% and we may even achieve better,” he added.
Australia had already reduced emissions by more than 20% from 2005 levels, he said.
Australia will commit to a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the Glasgow conference.
Mr Morrison’s conservative Liberal Party-led government was narrowly re-elected in 2019 with a climate policy that opposed the 2050 net zero target adopted by the opposition centre-left Labor Party.
Getting to the net zero commitment took political wrangling on the part of Mr Morrison’s ruling party, including winning the support of a rural-based junior coalition member — the Nationals party — with a number of concessions.
One of them was that Resources Minister Keith Pitt, who maintains Australia will continue exporting coal for decades, was made the fifth Nationals’ Cabinet minister.
The conditions also include a government review every five years of the economic impacts of the net zero target outside major cities. The first assessment would be delivered in 2023.
Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquified natural gas. The nation is also one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters per capita because of its heavy reliance on coal-fired power.
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